At first glance they appear to be the crumbling remains of a long-dead sea creature.

But a collection of shells found in a cave in East Timor are transforming our view of early humans in Asia.

The shells have been found to be the oldest jewellery to have been discovered in South East Asia, suggesting the first inhabitants of the region were more culturally advanced than first believed.

Tiny holes at the top of the shells along with wear and traces of red staining them suggest they were worn as part of necklaces or bracelets.

Researchers found sea snail shells (pictured) with small holes drilled near the top, wear on the sides and red staining that suggest they had been worn as jewellery. These 37,000-year-old shells are the oldest examples of jewellery to be found in South East Asia

DID THE NEANDERTHALS INVENT BLING?

Neanderthals may have created and worn the world's first jewellery 130,000 years ago, according to a recent discovery by scientists.

Researchers examining eight talons taken from a white-tailed eagle found at Krapina in Croatia claim they were used to create necklace or bracelet.

The claws bear multiple cut marks, notches and signs that they had been polishing by the Neanderthals that once inhabited the site where they were found.

The findings have added to mounting evidence that Neanderthals were not the slow-witted and primitive creatures they are often portrayed as.

The talons may have had a symbolic purpose - something that some anthropologists have argued Neanderthals did not possess or copied off modern humans.

Researchers have found some of the ornaments could be up to 42,000 years old while other date to around 37,000 years old.

This is around the time that modern humans are first thought to have migrated from Asia into Australasia.

Dr Michelle Langley, an anthropologist at the Australian National University in Canberra, told New Scientist they suggest these early inhabitants were far more sophisticated than believed.

She said: ‘It was not a cultural backwater as once thought.’

The shells were found in the Jermalai cave on the eastern tip of East Timor where other early human remains have been found.

One shell belonged to an Oliva sea snail and was dated to 37,000 years ago. A hole in the top of the shell suggests it had been strung as part of a necklace, they report in the journal Public Library of Science One.

Marks on the side also appear to indicate it had rubbed against other shells. Tests on modern shells by the Dr Langley and her colleagues showed the hole could not have occurred naturally.

They also found traces of red ochre, which may have been used as body paint and rubbed off onto the shells while they were being worn.

The researchers also found a Nautilius shell in the same cave that they claim could be as much as 42,000 years old.

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The shell jewellery were found in the Jerimalai cave on the eastern tip of East Timor (shown)

The researchers also found nautilus shell (pictured) that had been drilled and worked, that is thought to be around 42,000-years-old

Writing in the Journal of Human Evolution, they say it shows signs of drilling, grinding and staining with red ochre. The shell had been worked into flat plates that appear to have been worn as jewellery.

Previous research in the cave has also revealed tuna bones along with one of the oldest fish hooks ever discovered.

Also dated to around 42,000 years ago, these suggest that the early human inhabitants were already fishing in the deep ocean.

The researchers say the discovery of the shell jewellery shows these people were not only exploiting the sea for food cut also had a cultural connection to the ocean.

The Jerimalai cave (pictured) is thought to have been inhabited by some of the very earliest humans to arrive in East Timor. Previous excavations have found huge collections of fish bones and even some of the earliest fish hooks in the world

They wrote in the journal: ‘These artefacts provide the first material culture evidence that the inhabitants of Jerimalai were not only exploiting coastal resources for their nutritional requirements, but also incorporating these materials into their social technologies, and by extension, their social systems.

‘In other words, we argue that the people of Jerimalai were already practicing a developed coastal adaptation by at least 42,000 before present.’

In the past, the relatively few cultural artefacts found at ancient human sites in South East Asia compared to other areas like Europe has led some to claim the people who migrated there had a relatively primitive culture.

The new findings are suggest this was not the case.

However, the shells are far from being the oldest shell jewellery ever found. One set of shell found in Morocco date back at least 82,000 years.

Perhaps the oldest jewellery ever found are some eagle claws discovered at a site in Croatia that are thought to have been created by Neanderthals.